| Category | Template | Form |
|---|---|---|
| Text | Text | Text |
| Author | Author | Author |
| Collection | Collection | Collection |
| Keywords | Keywords | Keywords |
| Subpage | Subpage | Subpage |
| Template | Form |
|---|---|
| BrowseTexts | BrowseTexts |
| BrowseAuthors | BrowseAuthors |
| BrowseLetters | BrowseLetters |
Template:GalleryAuthorsPreviewSmall
Special pages :
The Cologne Committee of Public Safety
Written: about September 23, 1848;
First published: in the supplement to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 112, September 26, 1848.
The Committee of Public Safety consisting of 30 people was formed by the democratic and workers’ organisations of Cologne at their mass meeting on September 13, in view of the ministerial crisis in Prussia, the menace of a counter-revolutionary coup and the increasing popular unrest in the Rhine Province aroused by the armistice with Denmark concluded at Malmö. The editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, including Marx, Engels, Wolff, Dronke and Bürgers, as well as the leaders of the Cologne Workers’ Association Schapper and Moll, were elected among its members. The Committee of Public Safety became a guiding centre of the Cologne solidarity movement with the Frankfurt insurgents and of the mass struggle against encroachments on the revolutionary gains and democratic freedoms by the Prussian authorities, who started openly to persecute members of democratic and proletarian organisations.
Cologne, September 23. As already announced in this newspaper, the Committee of Public Safety has notified the authorities here that it has undertaken 1) to co-operate in the preservation of peace and 2) to watch over the gains of the revolution. Herr von Wittgenstein has passed on this news to Public Prosecutor Hecker just as he received it, together with an official request to investigate whether the Committee’s plans in any way constitute a punishable offence.
Poor Herr Hecker! Already overburdened with the duties of his office, he now has also to take over the capacity for judging from the administrative officials!!!